Tribeca: Go Slow West, Where The Skies Are Blue
Sunday, April 19, 2015 at 9:42AM The Tribeca Film Festival 2015 kicked off this week and we'll be bringing you our screening adventures. Here's Jason on Michael Fassbender's new Western.
Jay Canvendish (Kodi Smit-McPhee) sees the world through rose-colored lenses - that is to say, the name of his on-the-lam paramour is Rose and he sees the world colored by his love for her. In flashbacks we come to sense that Rose's feelings towards Jay are somewhat different, but that's not slowing him down. He will find her and everything will be fine, for their love is a grand and true thing.
Slow West ekes its enviable tension out of dropping Jay's love-dumb perspective down into the Movie Wild West we all know only too well - or think we do, until this movie gets to toying with it - with its brutes and indifference to beauty; what bubbles up is a bizarre, Coen-esque journey of colorful characters marching tho their own drumbeat... usually right across the open wound of Jay's ever-singing heart.
Nobody more than his protector and companion Silas (Michael Fassbender), who signs up for a hefty price (namely every last cent in Jay's designer wallet) to get him safe along the long road westward to his lady love and spends the the first half of the trip trying to carve some hard sense into the boy. Jay's romanticism, which infects every frame of director John Maclean's gorgeously lensed film (New Zealand stands in for Colorado and it shows in the fantastically-spiced landscape - if Tolkein had dreamed up Shane this is what we'd maybe have seen), eventually proves too much for Silas to true grit his teeth against though, and even the hardened gunslinger softens a bit in the face of such steely porcelain sweetness.
Fassbender and Smit-McPhee have an appealing oddball chemistry, two lanky scarecrows bouncing along on horseback - one china-doll clean, the other bronzed and whittled down by the desert winds. They could be brothers, from another alien mother. The actors find unexpected ways to play off each other, keeping the film's main relationship surprising at every turn, much like the fascinating and arch world around them keeps us guessing at what's coming around every bend. By the time Ben Mendelsohn shows up in his foot-thick bear coat waving around a bottle of absinthe it's pretty clear we've all signed on to a gorgeous but deadly fever dream.
Reader Comments (5)
Looking forward to seeing it later this week at IFF Boston. As a fan of the Western genre, I'm hoping we'll see more of these, as I've really enjoyed many of the recent ones including remakes of True Grit and 3:10 to Yuma, Meek's Cutoff, The Homesman, etc.
Plus, after just seeing Starred Up and Bloodline, I'm now a big Ben Mendolsohn fan.
Pam -- I didn't have a chance to mention it in the review but SW really reminded me of both Meek's Cutoff as well as the recent Viggo Mortensen "Western of a sort" called Jauja, which I also recommend. I agree, there have been some really interesting things happening in the genre lately, which was pretty much considered dead there for awhile.
Fassbender & Mendelsohn only share a little bit of screen-time in the movie but man do they make the most out of it. Mendelsohn is great.
I've heard from a couple of friends that this film is kind of a mess, but that at least it's trying to do and say something a bit different with the American West.
I watched The Salvation a little while ago, which basically just seemed like a cheap copy of a Western with no attempt to bring anything new to the table. Even worse, it wastes a promising set-up (Danish immigrant reunites with wife and child after a few years apart trying to find somewhere to settle).
Whoa, Pam, I'm seeing it at IFF Boston later this week too! Small world.
JA - I was already looking forward to this because of a general love of the western and the cast, but if you're gonna tell me this thing compares favorably to Jauja then consider my expectations raised!
I saved reading this review until I had seen it. Just came back from my screening at IFFBoston to comment at this and discovered I was probably in the theater with Pam and Roark! What a rich film. The colors, the soundscape; I loved it. The performances were so sly and winking. I am really looking forward to whatever's next from John Maclean. Thanks for the review, JA!